Little Pink Starfish

“Though wrong, still right.”
The corridor connecting the Tribunal’s main hall and training area had one wall that read: “Human interests above all.” On the opposite wall, this sentence was written.

Beneath the sentence was a row of silver frames. Facing it, the first frame was blank. Going further, the second frame held a black-and-white photo of a man in his thirties, with firm brows and upright features, dressed in a Tribunal officer’s uniform. Below the frame, carved into the wall, were his birth and death years—he died at thirty-six, seven years ago.

The next frame also held a black-and-white photo and life dates. As An Zhe walked, the photos and dates gradually moved back in time. So An Zhe realized these were the portraits of previous judges, and the empty frame at the outermost end was undoubtedly reserved for Lu Feng.

Thinking of this, An Zhe paused slightly. A weight he couldn’t describe pressed against his chest. If possible, he hoped Lu Feng’s photo wouldn’t be hung up so soon—just like tonight, when Lu Feng boarded the aircraft, he hoped this person would stay, stay in a safe place.
But Lu Feng had made his choice.

Following Ceylan, he kept walking. At the end of the photo corridor, an unusual sight appeared.
On the gray-white wall, a rectangular area was whiter, same size as the frames. At the corners of the white area were nail marks, showing that a frame had once hung there but had been taken down. Below it, where the name and life dates were originally printed, was also scraped away, leaving only some mottled marks. An Zhe tried to discern them and could only make out that it started with a capital P.

Ceylan saw him pause here and explained: “They say this was the first judge and the person who proposed the Judge Act and established the Tribunal system.”
An Zhe: “His photo was removed?”
“Yes,” Ceylan said. “Later, he questioned the legitimacy of the judge system and betrayed the base.”
An Zhe nodded. Human thoughts were hard to grasp; he didn’t ask further.

Ceylan settled him in a resting room. With the magnetic field gone, everything had fallen into chaos. The logistics and emergency response departments must be in disarray, and the rest of the base’s residents were panicking. All he could do was sleep first and wait for the military’s next arrangements.

Upstairs, footsteps cluttered. In the next room, Ceylan was speaking with someone, likely arranging the Tribunal’s next tasks.

In the pitch-black room, unable to see outside, An Zhe could only hear his own heartbeat. Unexplainably, he felt a strange sense—as if a huge vibration was rippling. He, Ceylan, everyone, the entire human base, and everything in this world were part of an indescribable oscillation, trembling, shifting with it, sending out subtle ripples. There was a phrase in the younglings’ lessons called “the torrent of fate.” He thought it quite fitting. The only part that didn’t fit was that this wave seemed to truly exist around the whole world—it wasn’t a metaphor or imaginary concept.

At that moment, his communicator rang—it was a call from the doctor.

The doctor asked: “Lu Feng has taken off. Where are you?”
An Zhe answered honestly.
“Safe is good,” the doctor said. “I just finished the Lighthouse emergency meeting. I’ll rest at the lab tonight. You rest well too.”
An Zhe: “Okay.”

The doctor seemed to be climbing stairs. After a while, he said again: “I’ve been thinking about Sinan’s behavior this morning. He warned Lily to go back to Eden. Could he have foreseen the magnetic field disappearing? Different species have different sensory organs—some organisms can sense magnetic fields.”
An Zhe said: “Maybe.”
Then thought and added: “But it’s very far.”

He of course knew every species was different. In the Abyss, there were creatures with incredibly sharp hearing, or ones that could smell prey from over a kilometer away. But saying that Sinan, at North Base, sensed the Underground City Base on the other side of Earth was under mutant attack—that didn’t quite make sense. Aberrants didn’t have longwave communication tech.

The doctor didn’t reply. Only uneven breathing came through. An Zhe thought maybe he was walking.

But three minutes passed. The doctor still hadn’t responded, only breathing harder. The sound, in the dark, was inexplicably unsettling.

An Zhe: “Doctor?”

Still no reply.

An Zhe frowned. Then he heard the doctor speak rapidly: “Get Ceylan on the call.”

An Zhe quickly left the resting room. Ceylan took the call, shouted “Doctor,” frowned deeply, and said quickly: “I’m on my way.”

—Immediately, he picked up a gun from the table, called a few people, and strode out!

An Zhe looked in the direction he went. He chose fast, but taking the stairs was too slow—he was a step behind.

Passing a hallway, he heard a gunshot from deep inside, followed by the sound of a body collapsing.

In the center, An Zhe walked to the doctor’s side.

“I… from far away, I saw his walking posture looked wrong.” The doctor was gasping, pupils slightly dilated, face pale—he looked extremely shaken. An Zhe looked ahead and saw that Ceylan had just holstered his gun. The person lying on the ground was the doctor’s assistant—someone who had been working with him all afternoon, helping repeatedly review Sinan’s video footage.

Ceylan said to the doctor: “Confirmed infection. Was it lab exposure?”

Infection?
Source—Sinan?

“Impossible,” said the doctor. “He didn’t have permission to open the glass case. No contact with the aberrant.”

Ceylan said: “I’ll go in and check.”

“No,” the doctor’s voice suddenly rose. “Don’t go in.”

Ceylan stopped and looked at him.

“Do you remember I once said—if one day, we don’t even need to contact an aberrant to be infected?” The doctor’s voice trembled. “It’s too abnormal… we must prepare for the worst.”

Ceylan frowned: “How do you support your theory?”
“No way to support it.” The doctor shook his head. “But you know—injecting aberrant tissue fluid into a test animal’s tail, and simultaneously observing gene changes in the animal’s head. Those fluids never even entered full circulation, and the genes across the body already changed. If such things can happen, why can’t infection happen without contact?”

At this, he suddenly trembled.

“Ceylan,” his voice now completely hoarse, “Downstairs—there are live aberrant samples. At least a hundred staff there.”

Ceylan’s face turned grim: “I’ll go immediately.”

“Protect yourself,” the doctor said. “Within shooting range, stay as far as possible from anything alive.”

He didn’t say aberrants or humans—he said “anything alive.”

Ceylan nodded. They moved fast, dispersing and heading downstairs.

In the silent corridor, only An Zhe and the doctor were left.

The doctor seemed drained, leaning against the cold wall. An Zhe steadied him.

In the silence, the doctor suddenly spoke.

“You’re not afraid?”

An Zhe shook his head.

The doctor looked at him.

“You seem to have something… that people of this era don’t have,” the doctor said.
An Zhe didn’t respond, quietly listening.

His gaze lingered on An Zhe for a long time, then he exhaled lightly, lips quivering slightly, as if struck by extraordinary inspiration. Then he said: “You seem… like a bystander.”

He said: “Everyone’s living in fear, but you’re very calm—out of place with all of them.”
Then he seemed to smile: “I understand why Lu Feng likes being with you.”

An Zhe looked at the doctor. The young man’s face showed faint exhaustion—he seemed a bit tired. An Zhe asked, “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Thank you,” the doctor looked into his eyes, voice trembling at the end, “You… just stay alive safely—that’s enough.”

An Zhe thought for a moment and said: “I’ll try.”

He said nothing more. In the corridor, the doctor’s words echoed:

“No physical contact. No airborne transmission. Can such a thing happen?”

No one answered him.

But downstairs, a gunshot rang out.
Then a second.
A third.

The sounds continued, echoing long in the building.

With each gunshot, the human theoretical system used to explain this world completely collapsed.

The doctor gripped An Zhe’s arm tightly. His fingers were trembling.

“…Why?”